The Loyola Marymount women's basketball team will host its first-ever postseason game when it faces Nevada Las Vegas tonight at 7 in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. Loyola (21-9) will try to shake off the disappointment of not getting a berth in the NCAA tournament despite an RPI of 44 and victories over tournament teams Utah and St. Mary's. Junior guard Bryn Britton and senior guard Taryn Reynolds lead the Lions. UNLV is 18-9 overall, 8-6 in the Mountain West Conference.

UC Irvine's first-round loss in the National Invitation Tournament will go down as another of those games in which the Anteaters couldn't bury an opponent when they should have. This time, it cost Irvine its season. The Big West Conference regular-season champions fell to Tulsa, 75-71, Wednesday night. It was the first NIT victory in 20 years for Tulsa (22-11), but it could have gone the other way. The Anteaters (25-5) quieted the crowd by taking an 18-9 lead on a basket by reserve center J.R.

A team from Southern California that is used to playing at this time of the year and another that isn't will have their hands full today in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. UC Irvine, making only its third postseason appearance--all in the NIT--opens at 5 p.m. PST at Tulsa. Pepperdine, making its third consecutive postseason appearance and sixth in the NIT, tips off at 6 p.m. PST at Wyoming. The NIT began Tuesday with Memphis (18-14) and Alabama (22-10) winning.

Turns out David Lalazarian's Pepperdine career didn't end in a bloody heap after all. At least not on the floor of Jenny Craig Pavilion in San Diego. A crowd of 7,000 in Laramie, Wyo., might exact its own pound of flesh from the Waves. The Waves (21-8) visit Wyoming (20-9) in a first-round National Invitation Tournament game tonight with a chance to redeem themselves after falling in the semifinals of the West Coast Conference tournament March 4 at San Diego.

They came, the few faithful, and grimaced their way through the NCAA tournament selection television show Sunday afternoon at a local bar a stone's throw from Crawford Hall. Well, this is UC Irvine, so the library figured to be more full than a pub.

Wake Forest won bragging rights in its rivalry with North Carolina State and earned a spot in the final of the National Invitation Tournament. Darius Songaila scored 18 points, including six in overtime, as Wake Forest earned a 62-59 victory over the Atlantic Coast Conference rival Wolfpack (20-13) in the semifinals of the NIT on Tuesday night at New York. Wake Forest (21-14) will play Notre Dame (22-14) in Thursday night's final.

Tonight's National Invitation Tournament first-round game between California and Long Beach State features teams that have never played each other and did not exactly figure to be here. The 49ers, whose 24-5 record was the third best in school history, were on track for an NCAA tournament slot. The 49ers dominated the Big West Conference's Western Division with a 15-1 record, ran off a 15-game winning streak and have won 22 of their last 24 games.

The USC Trojans have done all they can do. They finished the final weekend of Pacific 10 Conference play with a pair of victories. On Saturday, Jeff Trepagnier scored 20 points to lead USC to a spirited but workmanlike 82-63 victory over the Washington State Cougars before 3,350 at the Sports Arena. Now USC hopes it can move on to the National Invitation Tournament. But the Trojans will not know their fate until sometime this evening.

After losing five of its last eight games and being upset by Santa Clara in the West Coast Conference semifinal, Pepperdine's basketball team gets another chance to end its season on a positive note when it begins play in the National Invitation Tournament tonight. The bad news for the Waves is they have to travel to Boulder, Colo., to play a Colorado team that not only has the home-crowd advantage, but plays the style that gives the Waves' defense the most difficulty--fast-paced.

Adam Spanich told his teammates not to worry. All day long, he just knew the USC basketball team would get a telephone call from the National Invitation Tournament. "I wasn't nervous," Spanich said. "I had a feeling." And the senior guard was right. NIT officials called Sunday evening to invite the Trojans to play at Wyoming in a first-round game Wednesday.